Those days are over! The event here referred to may be Waterloo. Mr. Lucas thinks that Hazlitt’s share in Lamb’s gatherings “ceased after an unfortunate discussion of Fanny Burney’s Wanderer, which Hazlitt condemned in terms that her brother, the Admiral, could not forgive.” (Lamb’s Works, I, 482.) It is likely that Mr. Lucas has been led astray by the statement in Crabb-Robinson’s Diary to the effect that Hazlitt used to attend Captain Burney’s whist-parties “till he affronted the Captain by severe criticisms on the works of his sister,” presumably by his article in the Edinburgh Review in 1814. Hazlitt commemorates Lamb’s evenings in the “Pleasure of Hating” (“Plain Speaker”): “What is become of ‘that set of whist players,’ celebrated by Elia in his notable Epistle to Robert Southey, Esq. ... ‘that for so many years called Admiral Burney friend?’ They are scattered, like last year’s snow. Some of them are dead—or gone to live at a distance—or pass one another in the street like strangers; or if they stop to speak, do it as coolly and try to cut one another as soon as possible. Some of us have grown rich—others poor. Some have got places under Government—others a niche in the Quarterly Review. Some of us have dearly earned a name in the world; whilst others remain in their original privacy. We despise the one, and envy and are glad to mortify the other.”
Like angels’ visits. Cf. Blair’s “The Grave,” 582: “Like those of angels, short and far between.” Hazlitt was fond of pointing out this source for Campbell’s famous line “Like angels’ visits few and far between,” and of insisting that the alteration spoiled the sense. Thereby he is said to have incurred Campbell’s bitter hostility.
[P. 306.] Mr. Douce, Francis (1757-1834), Shakespearian scholar and keeper of the manuscripts in the British Museum.
L. H——. Leigh Hunt. There is a sketch of him in the “Spirit of the Age.”
aliquando sufflaminandus erat. “He sometimes had to be checked.” This is a quotation from Seneca which Ben Jonson in “Timber” (ed. Schelling, p. 23) had applied to Shakespeare.
[P. 307.] The Indicator. Leigh Hunt’s most successful series of essays, which began their run in 1819.
Mr. Northcote, James (1746-1831), the painter of whose talk Hazlitt has left an entertaining record in the “Conversations of James Northcote” (1830), a book which inspired Crabb-Robinson to say, “I do not believe that Boswell gives so much good talk in an equal quantity of his life of Johnson.”
[P. 308.] Sir Joshua’s. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), the famous English painter.
[P. 309.] Horne Tooke (1736-1812), politician and author of a celebrated philological volume, “The Diversions of Purley” (1786, 1805). His portrait is included in the “Spirit of the Age”: “He was without a rival (almost) in private conversation, an expert public speaker, a keen politician, a first-rate grammarian, and the finest gentleman (to say the least) of his own party. He had no imagination (or he would not have scorned it!)—no delicacy of taste, no rooted prejudices or strong attachments: his intellect was like a bow of polished steel, from which he shot sharp-pointed poisoned arrows at his friends in private, at his enemies in public.”
hear a sound so fine. J. S. Knowles’s “Virginius,” v, 2.